THE VAN ORSDEL HOME FOR NURSES IS ONE OF THE MANY INSTITUTIONS FOUNDED BY BROTHER VAN
Again the old pocketbook made a beginning. As the hard-earned money went for the house-cleaning a gift came to Brother Van; a grateful ranchman presented him with a cow. It was driven promptly to the two hundred-and-thirty-five-acre campus which surrounded the neglected building out by Helena, so that the few children he might gather there should be fed. The building, so recently the home of the bats and the coyotes, was cleaned and repaired and put in readiness for its first pupil, a child whom a dying mother committed to the care of Brother Van. Others needing school advantages were found and placed in the renovated building. The title page of the first Annual published by the students of this school of faith is inscribed: “To Brother Van as an expression of love from the class of 1915.”
Not all the time was Brother Van building churches. There are one hundred churches in Montana built by him, and about fifty parsonages due to his labors, besides six hospitals and two large institutions of learning, but there is another piece of work which he has been doing between times for the church he loves. Since1876 he has represented the Methodist Church of Montana in the denomination’s great governing body, the General Conference. At the meeting at Saratoga Springs in 1916, one evening was given over to the two friends, Dr. Thomas C. Iliff and Brother Van. They recounted the struggles and triumphs of their western life, and sang the old songs which had carried inspiration to the people of the west.
A few years ago Brother Van made a long trip across the country and came again to Gettysburg, where, as a boy, fifty-four years before, he had witnessed that great battle. A large part of the land where the battle was fought has been bought by the United States government, and the government and the states spent seven million dollars in erecting the memorials that do honor to the men who fell in those July days of 1863. Brother Van saw again the house in which President Lincoln was entertained when he made that memorable address familiar to-day to every schoolboy and schoolgirl. He recalled how he had gone to seek the sad-faced man. He had come into his presence a towsled, barefoot,awkward boy, and with new appreciation he remembered how that great man had shaken hands with him. Since then other presidents have shaken hands with the boy grown into a missionary. Grant, Roosevelt, and Taft have all done honor to the man so well loved in Montana.
CHAPTER XII
SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG
THE haze of Indian summer hangs over the prairies of Montana as they flaunt their golden flowers. There could be no more perfect days than these for a journey with Brother Van through the great state. One might almost call it his parish, so closely has he been associated with the settlement and growth of vast stretches of its territory. He shall be our guide as we visit the widely scattered villages and thriving towns, where he is eagerly welcomed by men, women, and children of all faiths and of none. There are no strangers to Great Heart of the Indians. Brother Van greets every one he meets with the Indians’ guttural “Oi-Oi-Oi,” meaning “How do you do!” When we ask why he always uses the expression, he replies, “Oh, just to show that I’m a friendly Indian.”
We start our trip at Fort Benton, where, in a well kept park, stand the ruins of the oldfort, a crumbling relic of days forever past. The stockade is gone and only a blockhouse remains. It is carefully guarded, for inside are precious relics of the past. Let us stand on the very spot where Brother Van celebrated his first Fourth of July in Montana by eating a dinner of jerked buffalo meat. Our eyes sweep the horizon and we try to imagine the scenes of former days when over those flashing waters of the Missouri came bull-boats or birch canoes, bringing precious furs to the Northwest Fur Company’s post.
In the town itself we pass the site of the old mud saloon where, on that far-away Sunday, the tenderfoot missionary preached to a curious throng. What of the church life of to-day? We spend a Sabbath in the historic town and go to the old mother church. It is a small building, simple in style, but we enter it in a spirit of reverence. Repairs are in progress; with his own hands the minister, a college and seminary graduate, has painted the woodwork and papered the walls. He has been aided in the evenings by the earnest men of his congregation.
The days of the Northwest Fur Company seem very remote when the new generation, with a small group from the older one, kneel to receive Holy Communion. The life of the trapper and trader, starved and godless, seems a haunting and an impossible dream. Yet the pastor has his problems. His church must be enlarged and modernized to meet the social demands of the little city. He must find means for providing recreation and wholesome entertainment in connection with the church, so that the people of the community may not have to depend for their amusement on the cheap “movie” theater with its sensuous appeals. He must travel far out on the wide prairie to care for the ranchers who are setting up homes in these lands that under new methods of cultivation are proving to be far more fruitful than it was once considered possible for them to be.